
Class 

Book 



V V. 



i I! 






abirtham finroLn. 



A DISCOURSE 



OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OP 



3braljaw Cittcoln, 



PRESIDENT OF THE 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

WHO WAS ASSASSINATED IN WASHINGTON, 

FRIDAY, APRIL 14TK, 1S65. 

grcachcrt in the i'arh street (Thurdt, ^.o$to», 

ON THE NEXT LORD'S DAY, 

BY ANDREW L. STONE, D.D. 



3OO COPIES PRINTED FOR 

J. K. W I G G IN, BOSTON: 

i S 6 5 . 



t 




LAMENTATIONS V: 15, 16. 



The Jcy of our heart is ceased ; our Dance is turned 
into Mourning. 
The Crown is fallen from our Head. 



"When, three days ago, the morning of the day 
appointed for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, rose 
upon a people jubilant with the joy of victory, many 
felt that both the designation of the day and the ac- 
customed manner of its observance should be changed ; 
that, instead of fasting, there should be feasting, in- 
stead of humiliation and supplication, thanksgiving and 
praise. 

But some of us remembered, and we called it to mind, 
that the chief intent of the day, as our fathers kept it, 
was prospective. It did not look backward with peni- 
tential review, so much as it looked forward with fore- 
casting deprecation to possible evils. The day was 
appointed in the spring season, when the great venture 
of the harvest was at hazard, and all the uncertainties 
of elemental blight aud blessing hung poised in the 
scales of Providence. If there were confession, for- 
saking of sin, — as was always true, — it was as a 

(3) 



4 SERMON ON THE 

preparation of heart for availing prayer, that " the 
early and the latter rain " might fall, each in its time ; 
the hand of the reaper bind and gather its sheaves 
with joy, and the autumn granaries be full. Then 
should follow the commemorative festival, looking to 
the past, and celebrating the throned goodness that had 
provided abundance for the wants of man and beast. 
It was this ideal of the day recently observed, that held 
so many Christian pulpits and Christian people so closely 
to its first design. 

We ought to have felt, more deeply than we did, that 
the future might bring up, into that bright morning sky, 
dark clouds big with storm and tempest, and have 
stretched our hands up with a mightier reach of suppli- 
cation toward the sovereign hand holding the balances 
weighted with coming events. 

The thought was on our hearts and on our lips that 
there might be; perils brooding for our country, shadows 
gathering over the path of its future. But who could 
have looked forward to so dark a shadow as this which 
has fallen ! who could have painted this sable cloud on 
that smiling sky ! 

There was talk, with some, of reversing our associa- 
tions with this month of the Spring, and our religious 
observances wedded to its annual return, and making it 
henceforth our month of most tuneful rejoicing, — the 
coronal of the year. But not now ! We cannot change 
thee, oh, weeping April ! oh, month of tears ! Pour 
down all thy warm showers : from our eyes the rain falls 
faster yet ! Evermore, from henceforth, at thy return, 
thou and the sorrowing nation shall weep together. 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 5 

How sudden the changes of the April sky, — sun- 
shine ! shower ! And beneath, on our faces and in our 
hearts, how faithfully copied ! What glad days they 
were that followed those two memorable sabbaths, 
freighted with such a gospel of victory and peace ! 
What a deep and tender joy rested upon all our homes 
and temples ! Richmond was taken. The sword of 
Lee was broken. Loyal and honest hands were on their 
way to run up the old flag above the battered and ruined 
walls of iSumtcr. Every eye was sunny with gratulant 
greetings to every other. How sudden the darkness ! 
Night comes in nature witli twilight herald running 
before. Our night came without precursor, — " in a 
moment, in the twinkling of an eye," as though noon 
and midnight had met. 

There were beds the night before last, I suppose, rest- 
less with dreams ; but with all the sleepers there was no 
dream so black as that awful fact that went pulsing and 
tolling through the night, and lies now like an incubus 
which memory cannot chase away, upon the shuddering 
national heart. 

We have lost great and good men before. They have 
been taken from the high places of honor and of trust 
with their robes of office on. They have been taken 
from the scenes of retirement whither a nation's homage 
followed them, bearing in its offerings before their feet. 
Washington died Leaving that one peerless title behind 
him, — "The Father of his Country." Harrison and 
Taylor died, sinking wearily down from that chair toward 
whose great vacancy our dim eyes look to-day. Our 
two great Massachusetts statesmen and orators passed 



6 SERMON OX THE 

away leaving us to feel that the world was less rich and 
grand since the} 7 were gone. But these were all led 
gently from our presence, by a messenger hand, whose 
power and whose right none of us could question. The 
Divine Will, by itself, and alone, made up and executed 
the summons. 

But our dear President was snatched from us by the 
hand of violence. This was the bitter element in the 
cup. He might have lived. He was not sick. He was 
not old. " His eye was not dim, nor his natural force 
abated." All wantonly and wickedly his precious blood 
was shed ; unchilled by age, untainted with disease. 
He had reached no natural bound of life. It was not a 
treasure expended, but stolen by forceful robbery. It is 
not simply bereavement, — but bereavement by such 
awful fraud, that tries us most sorely. 

And yet none the less — but how it strains upon our 
submission — none the less is it the solemn, sovereign 
providence of the reigning God. Truly " clouds and 
darkness are round about him." In this visit to us " He 
maketh darkness his pavilion," and our hand cannot 
draw back the heavy folds. He is trying, by a hard test, 
our faith, our confidence, our resignation. Oh that our 
struggling lips could say clearly, if not calmly, "It is 
the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him good." We 
must say that, before we can have any comfort, before 
our prayers can find acceptance, and before the divine 
hand will take from our suppliant hand the loose-lying 
reins of state. God help us to say out of the depths of 
this great grief, without a doubt, without any reserve, 
with our yearning affections still clinging around that 



DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN. i 

pale, dead form, lying in the chamber of the White 
House, " Thy will be done !" 

How dear he was to the people ! That thought 
comes first after the loss. He was of them. He was 
not lifted above them, either in pride of place, or 
pride of intellect, or the kingly style of his greatness. 
He walked on our levels still. All his simple, plain, 
homely talk, kept him near us. He spoke our vernacu- 
lar, the language of the fireside and common life, 
and not the dialect of courts. He did not leave us, and 
wrap himself in official stateliness, when he went up 
the hill of the capitol. His kindly face and voice, his 
cheerful, humorous, fireside English, his form and atti- 
tudes, and all his personal habits, made him seem of 
kin to each of us. A familiar, friendly, neighborly air 
hung about him everywhere. He put on nothing. He 
was always his own, true, hearty, republican self. The 
people loved him. That thin, swarthy face, that tall, 
angular form, drew after them, more than all beauty and 
grandeur in the land, the blessings of their hearts. And 
he loved them. He was thoughtful for the comfort of 
the aged, the poor, the hearts which war had made deso- 
late. The humblest could go to him, finding an open 
door and an open heart. It seems to me that we have 
never held any other President so tenderly in our affec- 
tions. And one reason is, we have never found any 
other so accessible to our thoughts and sympathies, and 
never one so much of our own mould and substance. 

How we confided in him ! He was a man to build 
trust upon. His honesty was a pillared rock. The 
pleasant air, with which, against whatever importunity, 



8 SERMON ON THE 

he kept his purposes, covered and mantled the sternest 
conscientiousness. The careless step with which he 
walked toward his objects in the country's welfare, 
neither wealth nor favor could make to swerve. All was 
simple, easy, and natural, but firm-fibred as oak, true 
as steel. The most faithful discharge of his great duty, — 
the highest good of the nation, — to this fixed, unrevolving 
star his soul was steady as the needle to the pole. He had 
a sharp insight that cut through all the rind of sophis- 
tries to the core of difficult questions, leaving such light 
on the stroke that other minds could follow. He was 
a man of parables, and translated the dark and vexed 
problems of political science into pleasant similitudes, 
transparent to the dullest eye. Where a diplomatic 
answer would have been dignified obscurity, he told a 
story through which flashed the honest light of clear 
intelligence. He was in this way a wonderful teacher 
of the nation. His brief, pithy, humorous narratives 
have made crooked things straight, through a thousand 
tortuous walks of State policy. This quaint, ever-ready 
humor was the soft cushion upon which the great burdens 
of his public cares impinged, covering and shielding his 
nerves from laceration. It saved him half the wear and 
tear of his official work. It kept his friends, and con- 
ciliated those who differed from him. He could convince 
with a smile, refute with a jest, turn the flank of heavy 
reasoning with this agile lightness of wit and conquer 
kind feeling, if not persuasion, — generally both. 

His goodness was his greatness. His honest heart 
helped his straight-forward mind. He saw truth and 
duty more clearly by this inward illumination. His 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 9 

reach of genuine desire carried out his reach of intellect, 
and became genius. He was more sagacious than his 
advisers, partly because ho was more single-hearted. He 
sought so earnestly the best means to the noblest end. that 
he was sure of an intellectual triumph in their discovery. 
He kept the moral sky clear, and it reflected light upon 
the mental. A pure patriot, who walked with honor, 
faith, and truth, though walking amid the defilements and 
corruptions of political life, and so kept his garments 
unstained. But this is no time, in the freshness of our 
affliction, for his eulogy. It is too soon to write that. 
We must wait till the clouds have risen from all the 
paths he trod, — till the smoke of conflict and the haze 
of prejudice are swept away by the sun-bright air of our 
newly-risen day. By and by the future will lead us up 
to calm heights that will give us perlcct vision over all 
these fluctuating levels. AVe are too near Abraham 
Lincoln yet, fully to survey and respect his great nature 
and his great work. Not till the wave on whose crest 
he rnde has receded with him a little, shall we be able to 
discover on the back-ground of these eventful times the 
true proportions of his greatness. Every coming day 
will add tolas fame ; and coming generations will testify 
that no purer, no nobler, no more fruitful life has been 
given to our nation and American history. 

" We trusted it had been he." whom God had appointed 
to lead us through both the Red Sea and the desert 
beyond, to the Canaan of our future. But the dastard 
hand of treason struck, — struck as cowards always 
strike, from behind, — struck, with the confession of 
weakness and desperate inferiority which the assassin 



10 SERMON ON THE 

and his cause always make in the very act that gluts 
their hate, and the good, the great, the gent 1 ^, the kind, 
the large-hearted, the beloved President is no more ! 
Whatever else may be dark about this mystery of crime, 
we cannot mistake the spirit that steeped itself in that 
sacred blood. It is the same spirit that has been deaf 
for generations to the groans and sighs of the bondman ; 
the same that struck with parricidal hand at the breast 
of the country's life ; the same that opened the murder- 
ous thunders of war in Charleston harbor, and has kept 
them resonant over the land through four wasteful, tragic 
years ; the same that sent hired incendiaries to fire the 
mansions in our Northern cities, where wom:n and babes 
as well as men slept in unsuspecting security ; the same that 
laid in wait for the President elect, with murderous intent, 
when he first left his Western home for the Capitol ; the 
same that advertised for bids upon his bead, through the 
consenting press of the South ; the same that administered 
keepers' discipline in Libby Prison and Castle Thunder, for 
a step or gesture amiss, with bullet and bayonet ; that 
made grim Famine jailer at Belle Isle and Andersonville, 
over tens of thousands, to whom death only brought 
release. This black, consummate crime is only the ripe 
fruit of that system of barbarism which has struck its 
roots so deep, and had such stalwart growth in this confi- 
ne nt. That barbarism has cheapened human life in hearts 
where it has had its hour ; made shedding of blood like 
the pouring out of water ; the cries of famishing men as 
whisperings of the idle wind ; the striking down of 
senatorial dignity in its own place of privilege and 
unsuspecting safety, a deed of chivalrous gallantry ; and 



DEATH OV PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 1 1 

now the cold-blooded murder of one who has led in the 
great marches of liberty to a whole race, and is hailed 
as deliverer and saviour by four millions of souls whose 
fetters have fallen at his word, and has disappointed thus 
the scheme to build a kingdom of darkness and of iron 
upon the necks of those millions, an act of fruitless though 
sweet revenue. It has delivered many a blow before, 
that has wrung and pierced the individual heart ; but it 
has found here at last its opportunity, Xero-like, to 
gather in one the hearts and hopes of all loyal people, 
and pierce them through with a single thrust. Will any 
one say that I go too far in attributing this stroke of a 
single hand to the whole system which it so fitly repre- 
sents ? The evidence found in the papers of the 
assassin, the time at first arranged for the execution of 
the plot, the hesitation of an accomplice at that time, 
until word should comk from Richmond, and the 
mysterious threats and prophecies of Richmond papers of 
(hat date, of some great shock to the Union, and the world 
even, then just impending, which would be the deliver- 
ance of the confederacy, all go to show that the secret of 
this conspiracy, and its dark purpose, were in the hearts of 
the rebel chiefs in the rebel capital. 

Hut what has it gained for itself by such triumphant 
guilt? Any reversal of its own infamy; a more clement 
judgment in history ; the blossoming of fresh hope for 
its own dark designs ; a change of sentiment and will 
with the loyal people; the blotting out of the great 
victories of the fortnight past : aught but a crimson hand 
whose stain strikes all through the soul, and the curse 
of earth and heaven: It has bought its revenge dear. 



12 SERMON ON THE 

And what, we may ask, is the extent of this revenge ? 
or, rathei, in what aspects may we view it, that shall help 
us bear our loss, and show us the divine hand mingling 
in it? 

That deadly aim took the life of Abraham Lincoln. 
But it could not touch his past. That is forever safe. 
It could not blot out one of those pregnant years through 
which his hand was on the helm of the ship of state, as 
she drove reeling over the great waves of the storm. It 
could not make good the threat, that he should never live 
to take his seat in the l'residential chair. It could not 
bereave the country of one counsel of v\isdom, one firm 
resolve upon which she has leaned so steadily in her 
darkest hours. It could not put out the light of that shin- 
ing example of truthfulness and dutifulncss which has 
been to us all, in this night of gloom, a star of cheer and 
of guidance. It could not undo the policy which has 
gathered and marshalled invincible armies, and conquered 
peace by the sword, without one compromise of right- 
ful, unfettered authority. It could not silence that voice 
that spoke out on the most illustrious New Year's morn- 
ing of all our history, and said to Four Millions of 
slaves, " Be Free ! " — and the winds of heaven bore it 
out, "Be Free!" — and the sea repeated it, on all out- 
shores, " Be Free !'■' — and the eagle of liberty, looking 
down on his own broad continent, screamed it, " Be 
Free!"' — and the bending heavens with saluting angels 
sent it back to all our dusky homes, " Be Free !" — and 
the echo rose in unnumbered voices of lonely lips, toned 
with wondrous gratitude, "Free, Free, Free!'" That 
word has been spoken. In that word the murdered 



DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 13 

President " though dead still speaketh." That voice can 
never be silenced, though those pale lips shall never part 
again. The work that has been done, and so well done, 
by this faithful worker, cannot be undone. iN'o power 
beneath the sun can roll back this nation to where 
she stood four years ago. Those grand acts of the 
drama that have moved across the stags will never 
retrace their steps. This final act of victory and 
certainty cannot be exchanged for that first act of 
surprise, confusion and fear. Our risen morning 
cannot sink down behind the orient, and hide again 
in the darkness of the past. The night of doubt 
and defeat, the night of slavery, the night of defiant 
p bellion, those deep shadows of the past, have fled : and 
tin new day no man can sweep from the brightening fir- 
mament. All this has been gained, for us and humanity, 
under that leadership whose stricken hand has dropped 
the sceptre now. The sceptre has fallen, but this work 
remains. The past is secure. No murderer's hand has 
power to blot it. 

In our hearts, too. our slain leader still lives. He lives 
more vitally than ever. Many hearts that were cool to 
him will have opened now, and taken him in. All 
prejudice will forgive him and accept him. He is no 
more an object of criticism: he is beyond the reach of 
hate. Hate itself will die out, and in its place will 
come a concession of his many virtues and peerless ex- 
cellences. He is dead. All pens that write of him 
will write forbearingly, if nol tenderly and admiringly. 
And those of us who loved and honored him before will 
take bis name and imase into some more interior chain- 



1-i SERMON ON THE 

ber of our hearts, within some more sacred shrine, and 
guard them there. It was not Abraham Lincoln, it was 
our cause, the cause of liberty, the cause of humanity, 
the cause of government, the cause of the Union, that 
was doomed to the death by that felon hand. The vic- 
tim stood on that perilous height, as the representative 
of this whole great scheme of human progress. He is 
its martyr. He died for that. He was slain because of 
his faithfulness to that scheme. Our hands led him up, 
once and again, to that eminence, and set him there as a 
target for the deadly malice of the conspirators. He 
fell hecause we laid upon him such trust, and because he 
discharged it all too well. We can but love him the 
more for this. Our nohle, murdered witness, with his 
good confession, his home and his throne, are henceforth 
in our heart of hearts. The assassin's steel, the deadly 
aim, cannot reach him here. We will teach our posterity 
to honor him. Our children, and our children's children 
shall hear us speak his name as our fathers spoke to us 
the name of Washington, and shall grow up revering 
and guarding the hallowed memory of this second Father 
of his country ; whom History will write, also, the Father 
of a race. 

His future, too, is safe. There is no question now, in 
any mind, whether any eclipse can come upon his fame. 
Would lie have guided the vessel as wisely, through the 
intricate channels of reconstruction, as over the tempes- 
tuous sea of civil strife ? Could he have gained such 
wido assent anil cheerful support to his measures, in the 
new exigencies of ruling, as in those through which he 
has safely brought us ? Might not some, who have been 



DEATH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN'. 15 

his friends, have turned against him possibly, as the new 
questions of the hour, and of coming hours, came into 
sharp debate ? Already there were fears that he would 
not prove stern enough for the stern work of retributive 
justice, and that his great, kind heart, rather than his 
bond to law, and to the destinies of the future, would 
have guided him in his treatment of the chiefs of the 
i hellion. But all fears, all questions, all doubts looking 
toward any qualification of his well-earned renown, are 
vanished now. He can show no weakness in the future, 
to reflect upon his strength in the past, commit no folly 
to reproach his old sagacity, make no blunder that shall 
leave him shorn of influence, and mingle large qualifica- 
tion with the praise of history. He is safe from all these 
possibilities of errors, frailties, and failures. History 
must take his portrait as he is, standing at the very 
highesl eminence of a just and stainless life. Not one 
laurel which he has won, and which he wears, is ever, 
"by any reversal of coming days, to be stolen from his 
wealth of power. 

He was permitted, too, to sec the great triumph 
toward which his hopes looked and his counsels helped. 
Thank God for that. He knew the rebellion doomed, 
the war ended, and the nation saved. That one supreme 
moment when his feet trod the streets of the conquered 
rebel capital paid him for all. He did not die like the 
old prophets " without the sight." He gazed with 
mortal eyes upon the glorious consummation, for which, 
with such grandeur of constancy and diligence, through 
four years whose weight would have crushed a weaker 
man, and would have crushed him hut that he leaned on 



L6 SERMON ON THE 

Heaven, he had been toiling. If the assassin had 
struck before the rebel banner fell at Richmond, and the 
sword of Lee was yielded to the hand of Grant, if the 
sun of the President had gone down before the sun of 
our rescued nationality had fairly risen, that would have 
been a darker and more trying providence. But that 
sun was up. Those patriot eyes saw its morning radi- 
ance, and reflected it back. He might almost have 
said, like aged Simeon, perhaps he did so say in the 
silence of some secret and thankful prayer, " Lord, now 
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, fur mine eyes 
have seen thy salvation ! " 

It will not be too bold to say, that his work was done 
when it paused; for God, who gives each man his task, 
so judged and so appointed. His mission was accom- 
plished. That for which God raised him up he had 
performed. All that was committed to him to do he 
finished, and finished well. That which comes after is 
assigned to other heads. God is not limited in the 
number or in the variety of his agents. Nothing is 
put in peril now by this falling of a trusted leader 
which God cannot as well provide for, and make even 
more victoriously secure. 

Least of all are we to fear, that the great cause of 
progress in this land must needs be turned hack, or even 
halt. That cause may be served and forwarded by men: 
but it is not dependent upon their living or dying. It is 
not invested in any vulnerable, human life. It is not 
something material which bludgeon or steel may strike 
to the earth. Its citadel is not within frail human flesh, 
or within the truest and noblest human heart. It is a 



DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 17 

kingdom of truth, — a life of ideas, invisible, invul- 
nerable, — on all the air, — in the faith and tcst.mony 
of millions of confessors, — in God's imperishable word, 
— linked with his invincible providence, — in living 
seed of thoughts and principles which righteous blood 
shed by the hand of violence only quickens to a more 
instant germination, and ripens to an earlier and broader 
harvest. That cause is God's cause. It is hid in his 
heart. It is carried on his eternal purpose. It is too 
high and safe for human desperation to strike. 

Let none of us in his great grief despair or despond 
over his country. Ilecall to-day that word which has 
become in these stern times our national motto, " In 
God we trust ! " lie did not lead Israel through the 
lied Sea to forsake them in the wilderness. He will 
not forsake us on the shore from which we have looked 
down on our foes overwhelmed and broken. He has led 
us hitherto, lie can lead us on. His counsels have not 
changed. His power is not baffled. He can appoint us 
a leader. Moses was not permitted to go over Jordan ; 
but there arose a new captain of the Lord's host, and 
the sword of Joshua instead of the rod of Moses waved 
in the van of advance. David was not permitted to 
build a temple for the Lord his God, because he had 
b( i n a man of war. and had shed much blood ; but he 
prepared the way. accumulated the mean-, conquered 
the peace, and Solomon reared the magnificent, sacred 
pile. Through our tears let us look up and confide in 
that Supreme Leader. 

He has mingled mercy even with this meat tragedy. 
Tart of the bloody conspiracj was toiled. The Secretary 



18 SERMON ON THE 

of State, and those smitten in his defence, v,c may hope 
will survive. The arm that conquered in the field, 
doomed in the foul plot with those who were stricken, — 
the arm of our hero, Grant, is nerved still with life and 
strength. God keep it so nerved. God shield the head 
of Grant. How wide the murderous scheme, and how 
many names were written on the assassins' roll, none of 
us can tell, but every great and precious life we can 
commend to his vigilant keeping who has numbered 
the hairs of our head, and without whom not a sparrow 
falls to the ground. 

What if the new unexpected responsibility settling 
upon the legal successor of the slain President should 
fill him with another heart, call him up to the height of a 
great consecration, gird him with noble and faithful 
purposes, so that the memory of one hour of shame 
shall be remembered no more against him, in the splendor 
of a long and just renown? That issue is more than 
possible. "This, too, may be given as the answer of 
Christian intercession. 

And oh, we have that stricken household to bathe with 
a nation's sympathy; to beseech God's tenderest con- 
solations for them; to lift them, and lay them for 
strength and comfort on the heart of Jesus. 

Of what infinite worth to them now, and to us also, 
those words of tender confession which came a few 
months age from the President's lips: "Yes, now I can 
say that I do from my heart love the Lord Jesus Christ." 

We feel, many of us, that we could have wished, for 
him whom we mourn, a different scene for the last hour 
of his health ami consciousness on earth, that he could 



DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 19 

have met the fatal missive on some stage of official duty, 
or in the retirement of home, or in the circle of religious 
worship, rather than within those festal walls. Yes, it 
would have been better. 

But they were scarcely festal walls to him. They 
were a sort of refuge often, for one who had no retire- 
ment of home, from the incessant calls and wearying 
importunities of aspirants for place and office. 

And it has seemed to be rather one of the penalties 
than pleasures of political rank and illustrious position, 
that they must yield themselves to the popular welcomes 
and fellowship in such festive gatherings. And the plea 
that prevailed with the President to visit the theatre on 
this particular night was that of his own kind heart, 
unwilling, in the necessary absence of their idolized 
general, that the waiting enthusiasm of the people should 
be altogether denied an object for its expression; his 
last thought not for himself, but for the gratification of 
those whom he loved and served. 

And so he has passed from the midst of us. Our joy- 
bells have changed their merry peals for solemn tolling. 
Our festive banners droop at half-mast. Our purposed 
jubilant processions must become funeral marches to 
this new grave. " The joy of our hearts is ceased. 
Our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is 
fallen from our head." 

We touch, in this event, one of the great pivotal 
points in our history and destiny, on which turn issues 
more momentous than we can now discern. But our 
future is with God, and not at the mercy of human 
scheming and human crime. 



20 SERMON ON THE 

We shall not have much time for tears even over so 
great a sorrow. Our work is stern and pressing. One 
thing is beyond contradiction. Yielding rebellion has 
lost its most lenient judge, — returning rebels their best 
friend. His successor has always entertained towards 
these parricides a sharper and more incisive purpose. 
They will meet in him a face set like a flint, a hand of 
iron. They have not gained much by the exchange. 

We shall none of us be any the more inclined to spare 
the last remaining weakness of the old system, from this 
new exhibition of its fell spirit, or to apologize for that 
temper in the midst of us that can make this day of 
broken-hearted mourning a day of glad tidings to itself. 
It is not wise just now for such minds to speak out their 
brutal gladness. Our hearts are too sore to bear it. 
They had better hide it, if they feel it, so deep that 
neither by look nor lip shall it get expression. We 
shall not be very patient with it. The law officers have 
found out that there is such a crime as being accessories 
to murder after the fact, and the spirit of Andrew John- 
son is the downright kindred spirit of the Andrew Jack- 
son of other days, and treason, North and South, will have 
a short shrift and a sharp doom. Perhaps we needed, 
all of us, to see more clearly the wickedness against 
which we have had to contend, and to be girded anew 
for its utter extermination. Let us crush it quickly, and 
forever. 

And so, bereft of this one helper in whom we have 
felt strong, let us turn to God with a new spirit of 
dependence on his Almighty arm, and make our tears of 



DEATH OP PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 21 

mourning the waters of a new baptismal consecration to 
the service of our country and humanity, the supremacy 
of law, and the safety, honor, and perpetuity of this 
Union, for which we have paid so great a price. 



